Beyond Longevity at HLTH Europe Part Two: Microbiomes, Breath Diagnostics and the Future of Medical AI

Recorded at HLTH Europe in Amsterdam, Part Two of our special series looks at four very different ways technology could help healthcare move earlier, become more personalised and make better use of the growing amount of health data we are collecting. Dr Marta Ciechonska, Co-Founder and CEO of Salient Bio, explores what the microbes living in our gut, mouth and vaginal microbiome can tell us about health. She explains how metagenomic testing and machine learning are being used to move microbiome science towards clinical diagnostics, including work in inflammatory bowel disease, as well as the links between oral health, systemic inflammation and changes associated with menopause. Ilay Marom, Co-Founder and COO of NaNose Medical, introduces a very different approach to early detection: analysing biomarkers in our breath. He explains how nanosensors and AI can identify patterns associated with diseases including lung cancer and advanced liver fibrosis, what the technology is actually measuring, how accurate it could become and whether breath testing could eventually make large-scale screening more accessible and affordable. Aad R. Liefveld, Chief Growth Officer at PACE Clinical, tackles a problem that has little to do with discovering new treatments and everything to do with whether patients actually follow them. We discuss why people struggle with adherence, how behavioural modelling can identify patients at risk of dropping out or deviating from treatment protocols, and why poor adherence can distort the results of clinical trials themselves. Finally, Ruth Prieto of Nebius takes us behind the scenes of medical AI. We discuss the computing infrastructure required to power increasingly complex healthcare applications, from drug discovery to diagnostics, alongside the questions around privacy, security, regulation and what meaningful AI adoption in healthcare actually looks like. Together, the conversations raise a broader question running through much of HLTH Europe: can we use technology not simply to collect more health data, but to detect problems earlier, intervene more intelligently and ultimately keep people healthier for longer? **Marta Ciechonska - Salient Bio** https://www.linkedin.com/in/marta-ciechonska/ Salient Bio **Ilay Marom - Co-Founder & COO at Nanose Medical** https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilay-marom-846793218/ Nanose Medical - Nanose -Disease diagnosis - Official Website **Adriaan Rudolf (Aad) Liefveld -** https://www.linkedin.com/in/liefveld/ https://www.paceclinical.com/ **Ruth Prieto - Communications Manager and External Communications PR lead at Nebius** https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruth-prieto/ The Ultimate AI Cloud Find out about HLTH Europe https://hlth.com/events/europe/ See you there next year **Running order** 00:00 Back at HLTH Europe 01:49 Microbiome Diagnostics 05:24 From Testing to Prevention 08:28 Breath Biomarkers for Earlier Detection 11:18 How Breath Sensing Works 15:50 Accuracy, Cost and Accessibility 18:05 Scaling Preventive Diagnostics 23:30 Why Patients Struggle With Adherence 28:50 The Behaviour Behind Non-Adherence 30:14 B-COMPASS and Proactive Support 31:08 The Clinical Trial Dropout Problem 32:03 How Protocol Deviations Distort Data 34:16 Rethinking Clinical Trials and R&D 37:56 Who Should Pay for Better Adherence? 40:46 Making Health Technology Accessible as We Age 42:37 The Infrastructure Behind Medical AI 46:37 How AI Is Changing Drug Discovery 47:41 Privacy, Security and Real-World AI 49:58 Breakthrough Projects and Recognition 55:33 Closing Reflections